Tolerance cannot be measured in terms of degrees of intolerance. I am essentially opposed to burning books even when they incite others to violence. But freedom is either an absolute or it is conditioned on not inciting others to violence. Anything else is rationalized bigotry.

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Sunday, August 12, 2012

Marketing the Truth

Yossi Sarid is one of the grand
old men of the Israeli Left.On August 9th
2012 he wrote an article for the much respected and frequently maligned Haaretz
Newspaper, “Marketing the Truth has never been easy for Israel’s left.” It was
both condescending and misleading.

The truth, like beauty, is in the
eye of the beholder. There are few absolutes in life and even fewer in politics
(Benjamin Franklin wrote in 1789 “In this world nothing can be said to be
certain, except death and taxes".)For
instance, the taking of a life cannot be undone and therefore it is an
absolute. But blood money has frequently been used to mitigate responsibility
and to create layers within law that protect special interest groups. Blood
money was first documented in the Code of Hammurabi some 3,800 years ago. The
principle of reciprocity was class
specific.In the Hebrew bible
(Leviticus) justice is applied across all
social boundaries therefore, radically, slave and nobleman were equal
before the law (“You are to have one law for the alien and the citizen”
Leviticus 24: 19-22).

In the Dark Ages of Europe a
payment to the grief-stricken family of the victim could both ameliorate and
forgive guilt.It was abolition of this
clause in Western Law that helped us crawl out of the Sewers of the Dark
Ages.It is still part of the law in some nations.
Its inherent potential for institutional inequality is well documented through its
embrace in Sharia Law.

Nevertheless, in the Western
World today, the taking of a life can be exonerated if it is defined as
self-defence while the planned and deliberate taking of a life is defined as
murder but may be extenuated under certain conditions. In between these poles a
drunk driver who kills is treated by society as having committed the lesser
offence of manslaughter.So the truth is
often absolute and conditional at the same moment according to the
interpretation placed on it by the individual and by society.

The brutal killing of Dutch film
producer Theo van Gogh in 2004 by a Muslim extremist was classified by the
Dutch court as murder while at least 600 million Muslims throughout the world
would view this taking of a human life as warranted by the act of incitement (perceived
or actual) against Islam.

In his article, Yossi Sarid
continues that “The left is often perceived as being elitist and condescending,
but that’s not necessarily our fault”. Excuse me Yossi but politics is about
action and perception. In politics nothing can excuse a failure to engage the
public. Ideals are without value if we are powerless to exercise them and
unless it is part of an effective opposition the party excluded from power is
taking money from the public under political pretence.Perhaps this is the reason Mr Sarid is a
writer but no longer a member of parliament.

I can only speak from personal
experience.For a brief time I worked in
a factory making car batteries. I complained to the Union Representative that
we, the workers, were breathing in toxic fumes and yet we had no protective masks. I was verbally reprimanded by the union rep
who explained to me that I should have been grateful for the job I had.The second anecdotal example occurred at a
ceremony where senior Labour party officials, observed with patient benevolence
the idealistic next generation enthusiastically appearing before them.With naïve exuberance the group explained
their future plans while one of these government officials stated, with sterile
indifference, that their future was already decided for them.That is the elitist approach. When government
knows best, top down decrees are imposed for the supposed 'good' of all.

During the early part of the 20th
Century Left and Right was hegemonic and authoritarian.Israeli politics developed during this period
and has not moved beyond it. This is the reason that protest movements are so
common and why splinter parties are a feature of the Israeli political
landscape.It is the only means by which
the people may express their disapproval of the establishment.It is also the greatest failure of Israel’s
political system that people like Yossi Sarid are incapable of understanding
this fundamental issue of governance.A
direct consequence of this failure is that ambiguity is institutionalised. It
is the reason that Israel’s
Supreme Court is so busy compared with other Western Courts. In an article in
Stratfor (an Intelligence briefing service) dated 5th April 2012 it
is stated that “Government bureaucracies do not deal well with ambiguity.”
Unfortunately for Israel
it energises interested parties to abuse the law and neglect whole groups
within society. Philosophers such as Noam Chomsky say that “Resistance is
feasible even for those who are not heroes by nature, for those who fear the
consequences and detest the reality of the attempt to impose (American)
hegemony.” We can apply this to any group that is sufficiently motivated to
object strongly to any ideal or law with which they disagree. It may be the
Revolutionaries justification for terror but is equally applied by special
interest groups contemptuous of both law and society.

If, to quote Sarid (in the same
article) “The music we produce isn’t pleasant to the terrified ear” then the
failure is the failure of the likes of Sarid and Co.The politics of betrayal is far too often fed
by a lack of empathy, an intellectual inability to internalise the lessons of
the past and an inability to communicate at the same level of discourse of the
target audience.